


pages from the personal grimoire of Sollux Captor, Wix

by thescyfychannel



Series: Better Natures [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Diary/Journal, Magic, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2019-11-06 01:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17930285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/pseuds/thescyfychannel
Summary: Selections of pages, in no particular order, from Sollux Captor's book of spell studies. Will cover events throughout the course of all stories in the chasingverse (or betterverse), and will be updated sporadically.





	1. Entry #1: The Quality of Light

ok SO i know dad thinks writing everything down will help sort shit out but he also thinks that i can actually like, be good at magic?? so obviously there is some kind of disconnect between that man and, you know, reality, going on. anyway, he's making it a whole thing and while i'm skeptical about it, he's offering me a dollar a day per entry, and i can get behind that!!

...i should double check that it's not one dollar for every entry, because haha, oh man.

 

* * *

 

i checked, it is definitely only one dollar a day, maximum. there _might_  be room for negotiation, apparently, depending on how regularly i write, and the quality of the entries i produce. pain in the ass, tee-bee-aich, but hey, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do for his daily dollar.

gonna start today off right, i guess, and go over what went wrong with the spell i tried out this morning.

 

SPELL NAME: Effulgence  
SPELL TYPE: Light Cast  
SPELL EFFECT: Turns an object into a permanent light source, to be used at will. Works best with objects that match the caster's nature.  
CASTER'S METHOD: Wand and Words  
NOTES:

i learned this one from mom. her command word is in Korean, of course. she uses 비추다 (bichuda), and taps the object with her fingertips. right now, i still need to use a wand to even produce a faint glow, and i can't seem to manage a permanent enchantment? dad said it was a matter of finding a balance of things that worked for me, but i'm starting to wonder if that's even remotely the case, given that it was a total flop. like mom says, faint glowing is not illumination.

if the issue is with my method, then i could try checking with the family for preferred methods and consider implementing one of theirs. at the moment, this is my best bet. i might try to look into replacing my wand, too? it...doesn't totally seem to fit me, as much as that feels like a betrayal to say. i know mom worked hard on making it, but i think maybe i should look into something else.

if the issue is with my materials, like dad thinks, i guess i have to figure out what my options are? it doesn't seem like there are many other things worth enchanting, and crystal and stone are generally the standard. 

no matter what, if i run experiments on where i'm screwing up, i could turn them in for extra credit.

UPDATE 1: found a branch that's still blooming, works much better, could cast light onto stone.

UPDATE 2: tried old wand on a bush for fun, worked way too well. talk to dad about this later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sollux's first brush with nature magic. He'll come back to the reasons standard Captor methods didn't work for him later.


	2. Entry #3,242: Light Concepts and Hard Magic

it's been a damn long while but dad wasn't kidding when he said i'd never run out of pages in this book. it has been even LONGER since he actually gave me money for one of these entries, but hey, building up your own grimoire is nothing if not a labor of love. 

anyway now that we've gotten things down to a relatively chill degree of college kicking my ass, i guess i should update things?? but ngl i do NOT have the spoons to sit down and go through all this shit at once so i'll try for like, an entry or two a day until i'm caught up and all that.

onto the major subject matter of the day, because by jove is it a doozy.

 

SPELL NAME: ???? (Illumina Manifest)  
SPELL TYPE: ???? (Hard Light Construction)  
SPELL EFFECT: Creates a construction made out of hard light that can then be pulled into "true solidity", AKA the real world. Said construct will be solid for the duration of its existence (until the spell is ended). All objects pulled into "true solidity" become real.  
CASTER'S METHOD: Wand (budding branch) and Light (any viable source)  
NOTES:

this...technically wasn't supposed to be something i could do. we were going over all of this shit as, you know, thought exercises?? but then i gave it a go later on, and, well. 

so basically it works like this: as long as i have some kind of light source [have tested this with a candle, a lamp, a solar light, glow in the dark shit, the sun, the moon, a star, a lantern, and a bonfire] then i can draw out some kind of hard light construct. with a little bit of effort—a push into reality, a pull into the true solidity that professor beyrness went on about for like half an hour—i can make it into an actual object, a real, true, solid thing. weirdly enough, it works on shit like washing machines and tables??

while i considered trying this out on living organisms, i've been avoiding it for a few reasons, such as, my abilities at art and drawing in hard light are not top tier, and also, i'm not sure how much energy it takes to make anything living. i feel like i could maybe tackle plants? either way, i want to take this to professor b before i go any further with trial runs. she seems...idk, i don't have any better ideas, and maybe she can point me in the right direction??

UPDATE 1: prof b was very helpful, have discovered that i can do plants easily and could probably do other creatures. am going to wait on that. she says she has some suggestions for my experiments, and the references and resources she gave me were very helpful in creating basic plant life.

UPDATE 2: the plant cafe near campus (bloominous, tied to luminous nursery) was interested in some of the plants i made, just like prof b said.

UPDATE 3: i've been getting some kind of tug from one of the part timers there, and i've got this, really good feeling about her?? i wonder if this is what it's like when you find your potential coven mates for the first time or something. or. coven mate i guess??

UPDATE 4: god FUCKING dammit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dates not included but general timeline:
> 
>   * first attempt is in the first month of sollux's freshman year of college 
>   * update one is about a week after first attempt 
>   * update two is about 3/4s of the way through his first semester 
>   * update three is about a week after update two (and visiting regularly to eat, drink coffee, flirt with feferi...) 
>   * update four is almost directly after meeting cronus 
> 



	3. Entry #5,000: Ghosts, Spirits, and Whatever the Fuck Eridan Is

big entry number saved for proportionally big shit, i guess?? anyway it's probably about time i made a specific setup for everything that ED's told me about his situation, even if it's only for the purpose of documentation. it'll make it easier to splice in everything else i know anyway. i think FF wants to include some of her stuff too? bon odori and all of that, from when she was living with her shitty mother and the rest of her family in the islands.

and, uh. if he can talk about it without, uh. uh. well. i guess if CO is up for it, i'll be putting in whatever he says here too.

 

going to skip the spell name, spell etcetera stuff this round, because it's not like there's any distinct, specific spell that ED's said is linked to this. it seems more like...a mental state of being, i guess?? something he switches on and off, and now CO can switch on and off too, depending on who's inhabiting what at the moment, and what kind of grasp on reality each of them has? ED seems to be all around better at it, it's one of the things they both agree on. it's possible that he's better at the whole thing because he's, you know, _dead_ , but it's also possible that his skill with navigating the overlapping fields of magic and the spirit world comes from years and years of practice in both. then again, it would make sense if he had passed some of that along to CO, due to the tether between them?

there might be a couple of reasons why the shift of knowledge isn't happening in both directions, though. for one thing, CO still has some...rigid ideas about himself. he's less free and floaty, whereas ED is all floaty, which is hilarious once you get to know how much of a stick ED has up his ass and what CO's personality is really like. it's like they switched or something, lmao.

actually ok look into that later, too, see if personality can influence personality.

anyway the memory transfer seems to be MAINLY one way but that might be due to the amount of time and energy ED's put into maintaining a separate existence. even when he's not there, he's present, which isn't something CO can say for himself, eheheh. i should get FF to take a look at the relationship bonds between them or something, idfk, maybe she'll know a little bit better than i will? or maybe even dive into the "what happened" aspect, she's always been better at fates and dooms and portents and that shit. lmfao she should've been the captor, my mother would've been so proud ANNNNND this is not the time to get bitter about that shit!! god.

ok. ok. so.

CO is more tethered to the real world than ED is, which is not without its benefits, which is not without its downfalls, etcetera etcetera, _taegeuk_ , all of those other things. ED is more integrated with the spirit world than CO is, which is not without its benefits, which is not without its downfalls, so on and so forth ad infinitum OKAY SO.

i mean i guess i can prescribe some mindfulness exercises for CO?? meditation would piss him the FUCK off which would make it hilarious. maybe i can talk him into doing hot yoga. for ED, iiii'm thinking, maybe we could treat it in the same way as dissociation? so ground exercises and all of that good shit. i mean i wouldn't be surprised if ED already knows a couple?? dude needs to chill.

or, i guess, unchill. in certain directions and ways??

ok fuck this i don't want to speculate on whatever is going on with either of my sort-of boyfriends, definite covenmates. will not be returning to this entry. if i need to record anything else about this fuckshit i'll make a new page and reference back to this one, lmfao. gods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 4/13


End file.
